A baker once asked me what plans I had with my sourdough.
First post on the new blog.
Welcome.
https://vancura.dev/articles/many-plans
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Václav Vančura
@vancura@mastodon.design
mastodon 4.7.3Design engineer at Red Hat. Previously: Microsoft, Xamarin, game developer (since ZX Spectrum times), and photographer (since, like, ever). Currently building a WebGPU game engine BLIT386.
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Joined November 05, 2022
Two new high contrast themes shipped in @podmandesktop@fosstodon.org 1.27 – hc-light and hc-dark.
Most of the work wasn't the themes. It was ripping out hardcoded colors and replacing them with semantic tokens, so buttons, progress bars, and spinners stop fighting on theme switch. The spinner now respects prefers-reduced-motion too.
A11y work is invisible when it's done right. Probably why it slips.
Read more: https://podman-desktop.io/blog/podman-desktop-release-1.27
#Accessibility #A11y #PodmanDesktop #DesignSystems #HighContrast
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Alright, here's the source! Check out https://github.com/Shpigford/clearly/blob/main/Clearly/AppIcon.icon/icon.json – the main parts:
⁃ "glass”: true on individual layers enables lighting effects
⁃ "specular: true on the groups is important
⁃ "blend-mode": “plus-lighter" is the Linear Dodge effect we know from Photoshop and similar tools; this generates above-SDR white and blue.
That's all the magic there is to it.
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The AppIcon.icns file only has flat 8-bit sRGB PNGs, so it doesn’t include any HDR data. The XDR effect actually comes from Assets.car, which contains an AppIcon.iconstack, a new layered icon format since macOS 14 (Sequoia). The Dock, Finder, and Quick Look in the app bundle all use .iconstack, while Quick Look uses the AppIcon.icns with the flat sRGB image. (2/6)
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Additive blending in the linear color space naturally builds values above SDR white, creating XDR headroom. One layer even uses the "extended gray" colorspace, showing that the pipeline works outside the limits of clamped sRGB. (4/6)
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Now, to try this in your own app, use Xcode 15 or later and target macOS 14 or later. In the asset catalog, open AppIcon. You’ll see an Icon Composer with named layers instead of just image wells. Turn on "Lighting Effects" (which enhances highlights for a more three-dimensional look) for layers that need bright highlights. Set the specular group blend mode to "Plus Linear" (to enable additive brightness). (5/6)
If you're on Tangled, I am vancura.dev. https://tangled.org/vancura.dev
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HDR brightness isn’t stored as pixel data. Instead, it appears at render time based on layer properties in the .iconstack. These include LayerHasLightingEffects (adds realistic lighting to vector shapes), LayerBlendMode "PlusL" (linear additive, which combines overlapping brightness), and the LayerHasSpecular and LayerGathersSpecularByElement flags (control shiny highlights on elements). (3/6)
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Xcode will then automatically create both the flat AppIcon.icns for compatibility and the HDR-capable iconstack in Assets.car.
I cannot show you an HDR screenshot even with Apple’s Screenshot.app in HDR mode (this triggers another new bug where screenshotting does not capture XDR-enabled Quick Look windows. Will file a radar). You need to believe me. Or not :) (6/6)
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@mitchellh I have a dream: Markdown-based headlines in Ghostty. Imagine what nice typography would do to the (enter your favorite agent) output! :)
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@fork_dev@mastodon.social Congrats! I am happy I’ve been with you since the dawn of time :)
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@fastmail@mastodon.social I only wish I were able to add CSS snippets to the standalone Fastmail application the same way I do on the web (e.g., highlighting GitHub issue links in notifications emails so I can quickly find them when triaging, limiting max-width on very wide corporate blurbs, and enforcing a minimal font-size).
I know it may be an unpopular request, potentially unsafe, but please consider it for the app too.
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@Migueldeicaza And I love the backgrounds and I know who creates them :) (hint: @jimmac).
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@marcedwards@mastodon.social @mwichary@mastodon.online OMG :((
Only if there was another product we could use to replace it :/